


Better

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-12 20:16:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7120993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all dreams are kind, and sometimes waking early is better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Mostly musing on my headcanon that Roadhog has a lot of nightmares.

Roadhog dreams.

Dreams are so different from waking; he always knows when he’s dreaming because everything is crystalline, perfectly clear and too real. He can see and hear and smell everything; perfectly aware of the world, from his breath, sour in the back of his mouth, to the slightest breeze against his skin. Waking life isn’t like that, reality feels only half as real; in waking he doesn’t taste his breath or feel the awful pounding of his heart in every moment, blood pumping furiously through him.

When he dreams, Roadhog gets everything wrong. The bomb blows too early and he’s swept away in the fall out, burning and screaming as his body pulls apart, and that’s a good dream. Every lover is lost, heroes always die, leather rots and chafes and guns rust and backfire. It’s a poorly written tragedy, perfectly rehearsed and delivered note perfect every night. There is nothing redeeming in his sleep, no lessons learned, no morality found.

Life isn't like a dream. There’s that little bit to be thankful for.

It goes like this.

Roadhog dreams.

Jamie is a speck of ash on a terrible plain, a burning ember in the middle of the wreckage of someplace no map will ever mark again.

It’s not just his hair that glows and smolders now, it’s all of him, his whole being blackened and glimmering with an internal fire. As Roadhog watches, the edges of his employer seem to grey, like cooling charcoal. Roadhog knows he has to move fast, to get to Jamie before anything bad can happen (as if something horrible hasn’t already).

But in the immutable logic of dreams, his attempts at speed are mired by some unseen force, as though the air itself had thickened to offer heavy resistance. He moves impossibly slow, fighting for every step. ‘Rat flounders, confused and lost, and Roadhog is too far to reach for him. Yet he does anyway, and ‘Rat reaches back, his arm blurring and twisting in the baking heat of his own flesh.

Somehow he reaches the smaller man in time to scoop him up, to feel the heat pouring off him and the crisp, frightening texture of his burning skin as it flakes against ‘Hog’s arms. The sensation turns his stomach, a casual flip flop in his guts, but ‘Rat is staring up at him earnestly, almost begging. There’s not much Roadhog wouldn’t do to make the younger man stop looking at him like that, so he cradles him close, and that’s when he hears the slow ticking from somewhere inside his partner.

“It’s all your fault, mate,” the young man said. “You started it, ya know?”

“Yes,” he has time to say, because it all makes perfect sense suddenly; it makes perfect sense and then the body in his arms is blowing apart, sweeping him away in the blast.

Roadhog dreams.

He is young, and they’re giving his home away for nothing, a mindless appeasement to creatures who only understand _taking_ , who will never be sated. They offer him many things for his land, compensation fair enough as anything.

And oh, oh it must be a dream because he is so tempted, the canteen laid out on the table in trade for his home looks slick and sharp enough to cut. And it will, he knows, because anything they’d give him won’t be any real gift. It will be poison, sure as the sun rising in the east, and worse, that poison will be addictive.

“Have a drink,” the suit on the other end of the table suggests, his slow smile canine and leering. He feels like a piece of meat, and it should enrage him, but he’s young, he doesn’t know the power of his anger yet and so instead he’s scared, scared to death. Because he wants to drink. Drinking will be easier than all the fighting that will come later. He’d rather poison himself on complacency than witness what he knows will come of refusal.

Still, shame crawls up his esophagus and lodges there, making itself at home as he reaches for the flask. He can slink away into a bottle, he thinks, and booze himself away while the country goes mad fighting that which can’t be fought. The world is burning, he thinks, and there is no dousing a flame with more fire.

The bottle slices roundly into his palm and he drinks deeply of that bitter deal.

He wonders if he’s always been crying this way.

Roadhog dreams.

The woman stands before him, swollen with child and balancing a scrawny toddler on her hip. She is no one and she is every woman he’s ever met, both and neither; more the idea of a woman than anything.

She places her emaciated child (both male and female, too thin to define in any meaningful way) on the ground and it shuffles toward him, arms up as if to be held. Starvation and the will to live. They are what he left behind in the Outback when he blew up the omnium. The fallout of the explosion had ruined the land, hadn’t it – wasn’t that what ‘Rat meant when he claimed Roadhog had ‘started it’.

_This he remembers vaguely, a memory’s hallucination, but real in its meaning nonetheless._

The woman cocks her hip, hands resting on her heavy belly. There is something provocative about that pose, leaving Roadhog uneasy. “You’re afraid of what’s already happened,” the woman says, “Face it or it will drown you.”

She picks the child up and offers it to Roadhog. “Enough died because of you. Won’t you take one more?”

He hates the implications of her words and the sultry sound of her voice, but as much as he wants to deny the killing of any child, he can feel the lie sticking, immobile and deadly in his throat.

Roadhog dreams.

It starts out amiable enough, ‘Rat instigating as he always does, pleading for ‘Hog to have him. It’s good to be wanted, even if you’re hardly humane enough to be called a man anymore, and ‘Hog doesn’t need to be asked for too long before he gives in, grabbing Junkrat and throwing him down, stripping him bare in harsh, easy motions.

For a moment it’s okay, Roadhog pinning the smaller body to some surface or another and fucking him hard, just the way Jamie likes it. It’s not until his fingers close around that slender throat that things go wrong. There’s a masochistic streak in the younger man a mile wide, he likes the rough play, but ‘Hog can feel his fingers going too tight for too long. He just can’t seem to stop it, dark spots flickering over his own vision as if he’s the one choking to death.

The body under his writhes and the voice begs him, panting and desperate, but nothing about it is good. Even when his hand comes loose of Jamie’s throat, he knows something’s wrong, the smaller body trembling and convulsing beneath him. He needs to stop, has too, or he’s going to kill the other man.

Instead he shoves the middle three fingers of his left hand into Jamie’s mouth, choking him in a different way now, except he can grip the little man’s lower jaw like this and _God no_ , he’s tugging and _please don’t_ he’s ripping –

The sound of Jamie’s scream as ‘Hog rips his lower jaw free chases Roadhog through the night.

Roadhog dreams.

Roadhog dreams.

Roadhog is awake. Junkrat is crying.

Not loud, not the kind of sobbing that draws attention; if Roadhog hadn't seen his face, hadn't glimpsed the shine of tears watering down the dirt and gunpowder scuffed across Junkrat's cheeks, he wouldn't have known. It is a silent, unforgiving mourning. The dullness in those golden eyes is like meeting an old friend, and Roadhog watches another droplet run down from the corner of his eyes, over the swollen red rim, and finally tremble on his jawline and refusing to fall.

This is awkward. So fucking awkward. Roadhog wishes for Mercy, for D.Va, hell, Reaper would probably be a better choice than he is. There’s scrap and disassembled bits of tech all over the floor around Jamie, some of it wicked looking in the moonlight shining through their window. Junkrat's done fighting for the day, for the _year_ , really, and ‘Hog has no idea how to make this better for him.

Fuck. Roadhog is still reeling from a lack of sleep, still half-frightened and half-pissed off, something flushed in his chest and face. He can't deal with Junkrat. He can't even deal with himself. Fuck.

"I can't sleep anymore," Junkrat tells him, dead. Somewhere not far away, likely in a nearby suite, there’s a celebration happening, but Junkrat is defeated. Crumbled. “I can’t remember any of their faces.” Roadhog does not ask whose faces have been forgotten, because he understands that one a little too well. “I hate you for staying with me."

The last thing Roadhog needs is something else to atone for, and he feels angry right then. Angry because Junkrat is dropping something else on his shoulders, angry that he's still juggling the rest, angry that he's angry. "I hate you, too," he spits out, bitter, swaying on his feet. "I hate this game of chasing after you, keeping your crazy ass alive. Wanna blow me up, too?"

It’s a cruel thing to say, and he can see it land like a punch to Jamie’s gut. Another tear runs down Junkrat's cheekbone. Blends into the rest, just a wet sheen on browned skin. "I'm… really tired."

So is Roadhog. “So am I."

At that, Junkrat lifts his head like it weighs more than a loaded bomb or the guilt of a sin – he shudders a bit, falters, and then lets out a wounded noise. Roadhog is still waiting for Mercy or anyone better equipped to help the younger man to magically show up. No one will.

“Fuck," he swears. And then, “What d’you want from me? Just what the fuck d’you think I can do for you?"

And Junkrat looks at him like he can fix something, all broken and glassy eyes, focusing blearily on him as though he were the last hope of an answer, the last hope of _hope_ , and all of that has been doused by ‘Hog’s short words. Answers and hope are now cut off and adrift, eluding both of them, and Junkrat is rejected, resigned, overwhelmed, and is crushed under them both, and it's all over right now.

It’s the end of a long day before the day has really begun, and Roadhog wants to scream at everything when he gets on a knee and takes the feverishly warm arm, careful not to pull too hard or twist too much, and loops it around his neck, and Junkrat _sobs_ then, just like anyone who has to hide their misery will learn to, low and desperate and starving, animal keens building not in volume but in breathless intensity.

Life isn’t always all that much better than dreams, after all.

"Shut the hell up," Roadhog mutters, and brings them both to their feet. Junkrat is too light, even with the metal of his prosthetics, and ‘Hog feels a sick twist of worry about that on top of everything else. He’s not supposed to have to care so much – Mako cared, was a regular bleeding heart, and he buried Mako years ago.

It’s real, they’re really awake. He’d be much worse at getting ‘Rat soothed back down to sleep if this were a dream.

Roadhog dreams.

Half-starved fever things, the blots of ink in his brain a perpetual slide down, black over white, the scent sharp on his tongue, like a snake, he just senses it and swallows. The light is butter-yellow, buttercups, gone, flickering in and out. Bandages on his arms, he’s lost control again. He can’t ever seem to do it right. Why can’t it ever just be right?

Sound fades in and out like the radio, static-hues roughened by transmission through smog, more shadows than skin. More words. Less print, more like needles, and now they wash over him. Harried, hectic, harrowing. Hallways to hell. 'Hog follows them up and down and wonders where they’re taking him.

He’s a little sick of traveling.

Grasshoppers. He’s thinking about grasshoppers. It doesn’t hurt anymore. ‘Rat being strange, gentle, for all that the man exists to stand like a splinter of bone against the jaw of the world; he just knows he’s holding his hand. Jamie is holding his… veins, twisted little things, convoluted, the blood pumping upwards and Mako can hear it in his ears, mantras, those prayers his father taught him when he’d still stumbled over words. Words. So much. He’s collecting.

He hoards.

Roadhog is awake. Junkrat is sleeping.

Looking away from the smaller body curled like a comma under the sheets, he turns his head to observe the golden light eking its way through the flimsy hotel curtains.

He'd almost forgotten how nice it feels to wake up.

"Better," Roadhog says aloud, considering the flavor of the word. He wonders what the day will be like, but is in no way eager to wake the younger man. He sits at Junkrat's side and watches him sleep, waiting, guarding, watching.


	2. Thankful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A sleep without dreams is enough to be thankful for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains mentions of child abuse.

Jamie doesn’t dream every night, and that’s one of the few blessings he can think of in this world.

Some nights – many nights, maybe even most – he can’t hardly sleep at all, managing only a thin darkness of the mind where his frazzled thoughts dim and for a time are soothed. Those are the best nights, snoozing away in little catnaps with a little moments of moonlight tinkering in between.

There are nights where he can’t manage even that, nights that will eventually bleed away into mornings where he’ll overstimulate himself on thick coffee spiked with shots of deep black espresso. In those nights he’s learned to watch ‘Hog from across the room, studying him in an exhausted fascination as he stirs and growls in his sleep. If he were asked to, Jamie could map the tones ‘Hog’s nightly visions just by the subtle motions of the older man.

Good dreams seem rare, but their sign is sighs and the rolling eyes beneath their lids, that broad face creasing and relaxing as if even in his fondest reverie there are moments to vex the old man. Bad dreams, by far more common, come with mutterings and sharp turns under the sheets, whole body negation of whatever he’s enduring mentally.

Then there are the dreams from which Roadhog wakes snarling and irritable, his normally dark mood unbearable and oppressive as he storms off just to put distance between the two of them, unwilling to deal with ‘Rat’s questions.

It does not occur to Jamie that these are the times ‘Hog has wakened from dreams of hurting or killing the smaller man. These thoughts do not occur to Jamie because no one has ever given them cause to.

When Jamie _does_ dream, the dreams are ugly as sin and just as inescapable. Sometimes he’ll surface mentally enough to feel himself thrashing, a regular one-legged man in the proverbial ass-kicking contest, before getting sucked back down.

Dreams are not like reality. Dreams are certain and hard and visceral in a way real life just isn’t. Dreams give when pushed, where life just gets harder.

Real life is ten thousand times better than any dream Jamie can remember.

It goes like this.

Tonight, he dreams of the Outback.

It’s glassy hot, the kind of heat that makes the flat country before you shimmer and glint like huge, wavering panes of dark glass or pools of eternally far off water. They’re cutting the land, eating up distance on the bike, and he looks up to see ‘Hog staring out into the desert, hair blown back and mask dulled by blown dirt.

It occurs to Jamie that he has never seen ‘Hog’s face (which is not true, it’s his name that’s been missing, but to the dream those are one and the same) and so he asks for a name, getting only a sour look in return. It should be hard to tell that the look is sour with that mask on, but Jamie knows. He switches tactics and asks where they’re going.

“You’re the one driving.”

And just like that their positions are reversed, Jamie in the seat of the motorcycle and ‘Hog crowded in the sidecar. Jamie has never been allowed to touch the bike much more than climbing into the sidecar and even though this is a dream it doesn’t change the fact that he has no idea what he’s doing.

Something starts blinking ominously between the handlebars, and Jamie thinks _thank god_ because he knows bombs, and that means he can do this. He can take care of all this and ‘Hog will be happy, pleased to have given him this chance.

“You little fuck up,” ‘Hog intones placidly beside him, all his anger just a perfunctory noise. “Can’t even drive without getting us killed.”

And then it doesn’t matter that Jamie doesn’t know ‘Hog’s face because they’re blowing apart, the blast starting between his legs and taking him apart in flames.

He dreams of the Junkers.

None of them have faces anymore, just terrible yawning white spaces that swallow them from brow to jaw. Someone holds him tightly, someone huge and familiar, and he wants to insist that Roadhog wouldn’t do this but it’s hard to deny when those hands are keeping him still while faceless hands strip him of his prosthetics and his struggles become laughable.

The first blow hits him squarely in the gut, the next in the face. Hog just keeps him on his feet – foot, really, since he’s only got the one, arms pinioned painfully behind his back. He doesn’t say a word, either, stoic as a mountain as these faceless creatures start digging into Jamie. It’s not even like he doesn’t care; it’s more like he’s not _there_ , physically present but mentally just out to lunch.

A punch lands in his side and the fist somehow slides _through_ him, pain wracking him like the world’s worst cramp. It’s real, that pain; he almost surfaces into blessed waking before getting dragged backwards, now laying on a hard floor with ‘Hog’s boot pressing down on his throat. He flails beneath the larger man like a fish on a dock, knowing the men behind him are armed, crying out when the first thrown knife sinks into his gut.

“They’re gonna kill me, mate,” he sobs, terrified and aching.

‘Hog only looks down at him, imperious with that mask, and says, “You don’t pay me enough to care.”

He dreams of home.

Junkertown with its glowering sky, so low and stormy he can reach up and touch it. Was it always this way? He can’t remember – there’s so much he can’t remember. The smog is ugly, churning and thick, but it feels good in a way to be here, a certain security of younger days.

Both his legs are what he thinks of now as ‘normal’; one flash and one cunning metal peg, but his right arm ends in a rudimentary prosthetic; nothing as sophisticated as he’ll build later in life. He’d pin himself at about nineteen. Nineteen and home.

Back when ‘home’ had a meaning, a feeling, a certain ineffable pleasure.

He knows it’s a dream because even in a dream he remembers the beautiful blast he’d been too slow to escape, the one that had rattled his brains and cost him his right extremities. He was lucky they said, lucky not to be dead.

Was that what luck was.

Someone throws something at him from a shaded doorway. They have no face, no discernable features, but he recognized the voice of a childhood tormentor. “Hey Rat,” the faceless boy says, mocking and laughing. “Don’t you know blowing shit up makes you wet the bed?”

Rat is not his name. Junkrat is something they called him, mocking his teeth and his knack for building things out of scrap both in one go. Junkrat is an appellation he will wear later with pride, a chosen name to hide behind when being just Jamie seems too soft, too dangerous. Junkrat is a name given in mockery that he will wear later with a sense of gloating pleasure, rising above the bullies and the pests who would pull him down.

Someone else throws something, then someone else. Some of the garbage bounces harmlessly off him, but some hits and hurts, stinging bruises welling on his skin, and he runs, runs for home.

Because home is safe.

His mother is waiting for him, but she has no face either, just a blur of confused features; eyes that are grey one moment and hazel the next, a thin lipped and unsmiling mouth that plumps and grins. He can’t remember what she really looks like, can’t remember, and she curses at him and throws a dish across the living space to crash into the door behind him.

“You forget everything, you useless shit, even your own _mother_ ,” she screams and whispers, crooning her words like a lullaby and shrieking them like rage itself. “You just want me _dead_ , ain’t that the way it is?”

“No, ma,” he says, trying to grin and hold his hands out to show he means no harm at all. But how can he mean no harm when he’s holding a half-constructed bomb – he can’t even remember starting to put it together, it’s just there,  magic and damning. “No, ma, I remember you. I l love ya, ma, I was just –“

Another dish is thrown, crashing right by his head. “You was just, you was just. All you ever was just is trouble, _Rat_ , that’s what they call you and that’s what you are, a fuckin’ junkyard rat. You ain’t my son, you ain’t _nobody._ ”

And he just stands there and lets her bring the house down around him, loving her and fearing her, safe here in this mess because this is home. And home is safe, except when it’s not.

Jamie dreams.

Jamie dreams.

Jamie is suddenly, sharply awake. Roadhog is sleeping, turning harshly in a way that means he’s suffering his own nightmares.

His stumps ache and there are tears in his eyes. His own mother, and he can’t remember her damn face. All those people, those people dead or gone or hating him because of what he is, what he found, what he’s done. It weighs suddenly on him like a the shockwave of a good blast, except nothing about it s good and he just wants to cry.

Crying isn’t a thing he indulges in often. Growing up rough like he did, you didn’t get caught crying unless you were looking to get slapped around. Not kind, but just the way it was. You had to grow up to be tough.

Moving with practiced care, be pulls on his prosthetics; first the arm and then the leg. It’s better to feel whole, at least, even if he’s still sore and exhausted.  

He needs to relax, but building anything is out of the question. Anything he tried to put together now would either be a total dud or maybe blow up in his face, and as much as he hates himself right now, he doesn’t want to die.

There’s another way to soothe himself, and he knows it will work much better. It has too.

When his fingers work into the complex structures of another machine, he is filled with a sense of control. Just as easily as he can fix or even improve a machine, he can make sure it never functions again. Each snapped wire, every rent bit of metal, stripped gear and torn bolt is an ease to his stress. He has the control, the knowledge. He controls the situation.

There’s not need to think much like this. No need to contemplate or worry. He can tear a bomb or detonator or hell, his own prosthetics apart, long digits flying over the metal and through all those complex machinations, in a matter of minutes. It will die, and he will live.

Whatever doubt troubles him, whatever fear has him sad and fearful, it flees as he unmakes things. Eventually there is nothing in the world but him and the broken things under his hands; the feel of broken bolts and torn wire and the constant clatter of his fingers on metal, muttering affirmation in a language only he knows. Whispering over a broken corpse that he is secure, he has survived, he is yet himself.

But the flesh of his good hand can only sustain so much, and soon enough his finger tips are spongey messes, so slicked with blood that he can’t grip anything, and all at once he throws the remains of the one-time explosive away from himself, letting it scatter across the floor as he breaks down in silent weeping.

That’s about the time that Hog wakes up.

It’s awkward and Jamie knows it, can see ‘Hog wishing that there was someone, anyone else to call to take care of his weeping partner, and that smarts. He doesn’t want to be the problem anyone tries to foist off on anyone else, and thinking that he’s made himself into that sort of trouble for ‘Hog makes him hate himself even more.

He wishes he could crawl away, hating to be caught weeping, hating that ‘Hog doesn’t seem to have any urge to comfort him, hating that he wants the older man to do that.

"I can't sleep anymore," Junkrat tells him, flat and exhausted. His voice is a wavering croak, cadaverous, and he can hear in jolly juxtaposition a cheer of joy in a nearby suite. Someone nearby is having a party, and Junkrat just wants to die. “I can’t remember any of their faces. I hate you for staying with me."

Those aren’t the words he means to say and he wishes furiously that he could claw them back down his throat, swallow them and hide that they were ever even thought.

Of course, the world doesn’t work that way, and Jamie can only sit and watch the anger flit across ‘Hog’s face.  "I hate you, too," the older man spits, bitter as he climbs to his feet. "I hate this game of chasing after you, keeping your crazy ass alive. Wanna blow me up, too?"

That’s a cruel thing to say, crueler than even Jamie’s slip of the tongue, and it hits him worse than if Roadhog had reached out and slapped him. He wants to curl up and disappear. He’s so very tired. He just wants ‘Hog to tell him what to do so he can do it and get back in gear. He’s tired. "I'm… really tired."

“So am I,” the bigger man says in a huff of a sigh, and it’s like knocking the wind out of Jamie’s sails. If he’s tired and ‘Hog is tired, how can either one of them step up and make this all stop sucking so bad? One of them has to be the sensible one, and goddamn it, ‘Hog is older, ‘Hog is tougher, ‘Hog is the stronger one.

He tries to lift his head and fake a smile, pretend it’s all behind him, that everything is okay, but he sees that dead tired look on Roadhog’s face and it’s like getting kicked in the teeth. The sound he makes is an ugly one, some kind of whimper he can barely believe came from his own throat as he looks quickly away again, faltering.

“Fuck," Hog snarls, “what d’you want from me? Just what the fuck d’you think I can do for you?"

The look he manages to turn on the older man holds no venom; he’s too tired to glare. He was hoping Hog might have something, anything to make this feel better, but does it really surprise him that the big man doesn’t?

No, but it does surprise him when Roadhog gets down on one knee, gently, gently helping him up and leading him back to the bed and laying him down. He’s crying again by then, really crying, the kind of almost silent weeping that broke up his childhood when Ma was in the other room and he didn’t want to get into it with her about whatever had him upset.

He must mean something to the big guy because ‘Hog strokes his hair and only sighs a little when Jamie insists he lay down in the bed with him. They barely fit, but that’s a comfort.

It’s not long after Jamie pretends to drift off that Hog really does. Judging by the rolling of his eyes under their lids, ‘Rat supposes he’s having one of his better dreams. He wonders what that’s like, and finds himself lifting ‘Hog’s huge hand in both of his own, tracing the creases and veins in absent fascination as he waits for morning to come.

Dawn is eking through their window when he starts to drift off, and the sun is barely up when he falls back in a light sleep of his own.

In that sleep, there will be no dreams, and he’s thankful for that.


End file.
